Local customers of BB&T-a bank with branches in Hellertown, Bethlehem, Coopersburg and beyond-woke up Friday morning to learn that they may not be able to access the money in their accounts due to what the company describes as "a technical issue within our system".

"Customer frustration and anger appears to be growing by the hour on social media, as the bank vaguely blamed "an equipment malfunction in one of its data centers" for the outage".

The bank reported late Thursday night it identified the issue preventing customers from accessing their accounts and employees are working to fix the issue.

"At this time we have no reason to believe this issue is related to cybersecurity", the company added.

Customers can still use their debit, credit and prepaid cards, according to the bank. We expect those balances and transactions to become current later today, and we'll continue to provide updates as that occurs. "Shame on you", one customer wrote on BB&T's Twitter page.

The bank also said that if customers have incurred fees directly related to the outage, "we will waive or reimburse those fees".

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